The Magic 8 Ball is not a good project management decision-making tool.
In a blog post written by John McKee for TechRepublic a while back, I stumbled upon these three decision-making techniques that have been successfully utilized by great leaders:
- Trust the Marines: The US Marines have a tool they teach their officers called the 70% solution. If you have 70% of the information you need to have, 70% of the analysis you think is required, and feel 70% confident that you are right—get on with it. The Marines feel that a well-reasoned decision that is well executed has a fair chance of success, but no action has no chance of success.
- Take a clue from the coaches: Coaches are always asking questions. By asking questions you will learn the good, the bad, and the ugly—helping you make the best decisions.
- Trust your feelings, Luke: Sometimes your "internal barometer" helps you make decisions and take action. Of course, intuition, gut instinct, or "the Force" might not be a good way to make all your decisions, but it’s often a good place to start.
The ability to make quick and informed decisions is part of what makes a good leader. After all, leaders are paid to make decisions. "Otherwise," writes McKee, "we could just populate entire organizations with lawyers presenting both sides of any case/problem to each other all day long."
Do you have any decision-making tips you’d be willing to share? Do you have project management tools that help you make good decisions?
As a manager and someone who teaches project managers, I have learned one lesson time and time again: decision-making is a very personal thing. I thin we all have a slightly different way of making decisions, and our core personality can influence it a lot. I am a big fan of the Keirsey Temperament Sorter tool as a way to describe someone’s personality, and your personality type says a lot about how you make decisions. One personal story — I find that I am a very intuitive decision maker. I will usually just “know” if a decision seems right or wrong. If it feels wrong, then I keep thinking until I get to the source of that feeling. I do lots of research to try to back up my decisions, but it is the feeling that I ultimately trust. Ironically, I also like to present my research to others, and most people think of me as a very rational decision-maker. They come to me looking for guidance and research into the best choices for a given situation. Despite all the research I do, though, the ultimate test for me is whether a decision feels right. When my research and my feelings both point in the same direction, I almost always have a good decision.
Alex, Thanks for contributing to the conversation. I agree. How we make decisions is a personal thing. I also agree with the Marines, an imperfect decision executed well has a better chance of success than making no decision.